Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Barack Obama owns one car, a Ford Escape hybrid, an American green machine, a positive symbol of environmental concerns and American patriotism. In contrast, John McCain’s family owns 13 vehicles, including several gas-guzzlers, all of which he proudly embraces, except one - his daughter’s Toyota Prius hybrid, which he hastened to disown - a negative symbol of American patriotism over environmental concerns. And while Joe Biden has no need to prove anything to his eminently unworthy opponent, Sarah Palin had to wrap herself in an American flag to make her point, whether she was wearing fur underneath it or not. All in all, the one common denominator is Patriotism.

Traditionally, patriotism is the rallying cry of American politics. The president - the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military with 50% ($650 billion) of the $1.3 trillion annual global military budget at his beck and call (e.g. vs China’s $8 billion) - is not called “the most powerful man on Earth” for nothing. By traditional definition, his/her top commitment is to the United States, even if the whole world burns. In fact, to exploit this commitment, he would let, or even make, the world burn even hotter, if this could increase the "Security" of his “Homeland” on paper. But in this crucial time of planetary crisis, when all national problems culminate in and converge upon one huge global problem, many old traditions need be left on the wayside. What do the presidential aspirants plan to do with all this power in saving the world of which America is an integral part?

If the candidates has any vision at all, he or she would be talking about creating and leading an international task force to save the global environment and life on Earth. He/she would be rallying the whole world to set aside all differences to collectively fight global warming and secure our children’s future regardless of nationality. But their highest level of thinking as betrayed by their own words so far I’ve heard has failed to transcend the national level on to the planetary realm. At no point have I seen a hint of global leadership. It is still the provincial “Homeland Security” when what the whole world including the U.S. needs is “Home-Planet Security”, without which there could be no security in any homeland of any nation. If international competition is still the order of the day, they would still talk in terms of a new arms race against Russia and/or China and/or even Iran, rather than to see which country could save the planet first and best. The way things are going, what this new crop of power aspirants is striving for is to make sure that on the sinking ship called the Titanic, the stateroom named America is water-tight.

Very well, if they want to talk Patriotism, I’ll talk patriotism. If they want to talk Homeland Security, I’ll talk homeland security. This is what I have to say to the candidates.

Some time in the not too distant future, the United States will be under massive attack. This attack will come from both the west and the east, both the sea and the air. Many American cities will fall, much American earth will be scorched, and millions of American lives will be ruined. The American military will be powerless in the face of this total onslaught. This will be the greatest defeat of any Commander-in-Chief and the worst failure of his/her Homeland Security. When it is all said and done, America will have lost the following cities, in whole or part, to the enemy, starting with Sarah Palin’s own Anchorage and Juneau, plus:

This will take some time to unfold, but it will be inevitable - if the new American president does not do the right thing, much less do the wrong thing, as of 2009. He or she may resurrect or even revitalize the oil-based American economy in the short term, but as Commander-in-Chief he/she will go down in history as the biggest loser ever. If/when this attack comes, it will be inexorable and overwhelming. Future Americans, if America would still survive, will look back and identify President Obama, or President McCain, or President Biden, or, God forbid, President Palin, as not only the worst president in American history, but the worst Criminal Against Nature and Humanity of all time.

The enemy in this case is not Iran, nor China, nor Russia. It is the rising sea level and the sizzling air temperature. Ultimately, “we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.” In the event of a global ice-meltdown - and given the current "business as usual" scenario it will happen - the sea level will rise by some 70 meters or 230 feet which will drown hundreds of cities worldwide. At the same time, the atmospheric and oceanic temperatures will have risen by 10oC/16oF or more which could doom over 80% of all species to extinction; those cities and states not claimed by the sea will have four choices - to be steamed or roasted or baked or fried. In the eyes of future Americans, in fact of all future world citizens, the responsibility will rest squarely on the shoulders of the 44th American president, because with this greatest power comes the heaviest responsibility. It is a make-it or break-it presidency. Of the contenders, Obama could possibly be a make-it president, and McCain less so but still might be, had he not shown the incredibly poor judgment in his choice of a running-mate, but should McCain become president and couldn’t last the full term, his sidekick and successor Sarah Palin, who openly states that global warming is not caused by human action, would prove a break-it president for certain.

Basically, for all candidates, it is very simple. Stop emitting greenhouse gasses now or sooner, and America may avert the attack. Continue guzzling oil and ethanol “business as usual“, and he/she will doom not only America but the whole world to this calamity. So be warned, candidates. Your reputation in history, if history itself can survive, will be up to what you do or fail to do over the next four years - the most crucial four year in human history.

I would still prefer to rise above personal factors and stay with terms like “our children’s future” or “the global environment“, or “life on Earth”, but frankly, I do not trust their sincerity in these more exalted and universal matters. One way or another, I'm just a Canadian who can't even vote, to whom therefore they would not pay the least attention, but frankly, I'm afraid of an American invasion if they manage to wipe out their own homeland.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

I wouldn't buy real estate in New Orleans or Miami if I were you, or Richmond BC near where I live, or Amsterdam or Shanghai, for that matter. They are all doomed. It is inevitable. Their decades are numbered.

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, and the 2000+ glaciers of the Himalayas, are all melting, due of course to global warming, and at an accelerating rate which astounds even climate change experts. The sea level will rise by 1 meter (3.3 ft) within decades. When (not if) that happens, the above-named cities and more, many more, will be on the seaward side of new coastlines around the world. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels and biofuels yesterday, this will still happen. If, on the other hand, we carry on "business as usual", even worse will descend upon the world, much much worse.

If/when Greenland's ice-sheet melts off, this alone will raise the sea level by 7 m (23 ft). Some argue that it would take Greenland some time to lose all its ice, but since ice is melting all over the world, it does not take a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice-sheet to raise the sea level by that amount. And when that happens, Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York City, Newark, Trenton, Camden, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Norfolk, the Outer Banks, Charleston, Savannah, Ft. Lauderdale, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles and Beaumont, to name just the cities in the U.S. east and southeast, will follow Miami and New Orleans, in whole or part, into the sea.

Way before then, however, global warming will have accelerated into runaway global heating due to massive release of methane from Arctic/subArctic permafrost thaw and oceanic methane clathrate degassing, which will drive all ice on Earth inexorably towards global meltdown, raising the sea level by 70 m (230 ft). This will eliminate not only cities but entire states, including New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and eastern Texas - in the U.S. alone. Asia and Europe will suffer even greater losses. Australia will be reduced to a few islands. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced worldwide, but to where?

By then, with methane generating its own devastating feedback loop, the global temperature will have risen upwards of 10oC/16oF. All these calamities, huge as they may be, will be relatively minor compared to the global loss of habitat and species. Canada may become wetter for a while, but what will be left of the U.S. will have little agricultural value, where famine will devour the ex-beef-guzzlers. The great Amazon Rainforest will have become the great Amazon Desert, all 7 million species down the drain. The Sahara may become greener, but sub-Sahara Africa will dry out even more, all its magnificent wildlife a mere memory. The six rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers, upon which 2 billion people depend, will dwindle to seasonal rain-driven flash floods at best. The oceans will have become so hot and acidic that over 90% of all marine species will have disappeared. The only "better" outcome would be an energy-oriented WW3, where quick death replaces prolonged agony.

Some with deficiencies in knowledge or foresight or altruism or conscience, or all of the above, whether or not they have children of their own, are often heard to say, "Even if all this will happen, it won't do so for decades and centuries, and certainly not in my lifetime, so why should I be concerned? What does it have to do with me today?"

I say to them, as bluntly as I can, that if we have one chance in a thousand at all to prevent this from happening, the time to take it is now. We have a window of opportunity no wider than 8 years (100 months), or two political terms, to set a new course for humanity. We have neither the time, nor the political terms, to waste. What this coming new presidency will do or won't do will determine the entire future of humankind, the survival of millions of species, and life on Earth itself.

And what do the candidates have in store for us that we can see? More of the same, or, given the likes of the despicable Sarah Palin, probably much worse. None of them, regardless of party, has a long term comprehensive plan that can take us out of the enormous hole we have dug for ourselves, but instead will likely allow the criminals against nature to drag the rest of us into even lower depths. Their populist approach makes them cowardly followers of the lowest common denominator of ignorance and greed, not visionary leaders by the knowledge and wisdom of our best and brightest.

Before this window of opportunity closes and shuts out our future forever, our best and brightest must shine for what they are worth to illuminate our only viable path in this our darkest hour.

Since the AR Conference, I've been to Pennsylvania (e.g. Allentown) and New Jersey (e.g. Freehold) to give a few presentations, and am now back in Charlotte's place in St. Michaels, Maryland. Following are the new developments:

1. HOPE-GEO has changed focus to target secondary schools as of September. The HOPE-GEO team has been developing school databases and contacting the principals, aiming for talks starting around mid-September.

2. Another new focus is the mayors of U.S. cities. Recall that back in May this year in Florida the Conference of U.S. Mayors, involving several hundred mayors from across the country, resolved to ban the use of Alberta-tar-sands-derived gasoline in their city vehicular fleets. The objective of this new focus is to induce more U.S. mayors to sign on to this resolution. So, the HOPE-GEO team has also been compiling a database of the mayors of the cities in the states I'll be traversing for the rest of the tour, and started sending exploratory emails to their offices.

3. A special focus of this is to target the cities on the seaward side of the new coastline given a certain amount of sea-level rise due to global warming - e.g. 7 meters (23 ft.) if the Greenland ice-sheet melts off (which of course won't happen in isolation - with the mountain glaciers and the Antarctic ice-shelves melting along with it, raising the sea-level even higher). If all the land ice has melted off, the sea level would be some 100 meters or 330 ft higher than today's. I'm calling this outreach the Future-Submerged-Cities Tour. If we use this ultimate figure of total global ice meltdown, almost all the states in the US east coast, southeast and south coasts would be submerged. This should have media potential.

4. To expand the media potential, HOPE-GEO could tie a line of ribbons (the survey type) along the new coastline. The local papers in all the cities along the ribbon-line, and of course those on the seaward side of it, should be interested.

5. Since the beginning of the tour on July 1, I've taken some 300GB's worth of videos: of the fly-over of the Alberta tar sands, of Taina Ketola interviewing me while I was driving to and from the tar sands through British Columbia and Alberta, my lectures to various audiences from states to state, and my 13 speeches at the Animal Rights National Conference. It does our children, the animals and the Earth no good to have the footage sitting in my external hard-drive. So, I spent the last 2 weeks self-teaching video conversion, video editing and video launching on to YouTube and MySpace, starting from a know-nothing position. My initial impulse was to send the raw videos in DVD or flash-drive forms to a volunteer who knows what he/she is doing, but eventually I arrived at the position of wanting to do it myself. First thing I found out was that most video editing and conversion programs require at least 2GB RAM, some say 3GB, for enough power to process video, in which light my old laptop, with only a 512MB RAM and a near-full 70GB hard-drive, was entirely inadequate. I tried it and it was indeed a video-snail. So I went shopping, and got a Toshiba with a 2GB RAM and a 250GB hard-drive ($490 @ Best Buy). As of day before yesterday, I've begun uploading videos on to YouTube, beginning with 2 events at the AR2008 conference (the Sharon Christman song and my plenary speech Acting Globally, both in lo-res), then 16 segments of my flight over the tar sands, followed by several of my other conference sessions plus the Christman song and my plenary again, but in hi-res). Now I've loaded about half of my dozen AR2008 speeches (usually maximum 12 minutes each - ideal for YouTube). I'll upload the rest of the speeches in the coming days, plus some of my interviews while driving to and from the tar sands. To view the videos go to www.YouTube.com and search for "Anthony Marr"; they should all appear. And keep checking over the next weeks. Now is the time to beginning publicising the videos.

6. Future bookings are trickling in, including a presentation in Middlesex NJ on Oct. 4 (Steve Ember, whose functions are often well attended), one in Lower Manhattan NY on Oct. 9 (Adam Weissman, Wetlands Preserve), and one in Bethlehem PA, date to be determined.

About Anthony Marr

Anthony Marr
* has a degree in physics
* is the author of "OMNI-SCIENCE and the Human Destiny" (2003) and "Homo Sapiens SAVE YOUR EARTH" (2008)
* 1995, he cleaned up N. American Chinatowns of endangered species medicines
* 1996, he led "the highest-profile anti-trophy-hunting campaign in Canada" (Globe and Mail).
* 1997-1999, he worked in 3 tiger reserves in India.
* 1999, he founded Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE).
* 2004/2005, he conducted operations in Japan against whaling and dolphin slaughter.
* 2003-2011, completed 7 Compassion for Animals Road Expeditions (CARE tours, each covering 30-45 states over 4-7 months), and spoke at the National AR Conference every year
* 2009, he founded the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC)
* 2010, he won the Henry Spira Grassroots Activist Award.
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.facebook.com/AnthonyMarr001
www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
www.AnthonyMarr13.wordpress.com
www.Dying-for Salvation.blogspot.com